Coal-fired pizza facts for kids

The coal-fired pizza oven at Lombardi's Pizza in Manhattan

Coal-fired pizza is a pizza style in the United States. New York-style pizza and New Haven-style pizza are often cooked in coal-fired pizza ovens. A coal-fired oven can reach 900 °F (482 °C) and cook a pie in two to three or five minutes.

Pizzerias outside of the Northeastern United States that feature coal-fired ovens are uncommon enough to be noted in travel guides: for instance, Black Sheep Pizza with the first coal-fired oven in Minneapolis, or URBN in San Diego. As of 2007, coal-fired ovens were quite uncommon in the Western United States with only five west of the Mississippi: four in an Arizona chain and one more in Las Vegas.

Coal Fire Oven has now opened up in Windsor, Ontario, Canada as the only oven in Eastern Canada. It is renowned for their coal fire pizza and wings - The Chelsea Coal Fire Pizza. They are now doing coal fire frozen pizzas too.

The growing popularity of coal-fired pizza in the 2010s was identified as a major market for anthracite coal suppliers, most of whom are in Pennsylvania's Coal Region, who generally see a declining market due to alternate industrial and home heating fuel sources.

Health concerns

Concerns have been raised about particulates, sulfur dioxide and CO₂ emissions from coal-fired pizza ovens.

Gallery

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  New Haven-style pizza cooked in a coal-fired oven at Sally's Apizza